Carl's Reaction to Fire Alarms
by TimmyTurnerFan
Summary: Carl, the rabbit character with Asperger's Syndrome, goes through a fire drill. My third fanfic featuring Carl. One shot. (Edited July 4, 2014 for errors.) Rated K plus for one certain word (it's not a bad word though, I don't write bad words.)


**Carl's Point of View**

Hi, I am Carl. I am eight years old and I am the rabbit character with Asperger's Syndrome. I will be telling the story from here on. First let me inform you that the person writing the story I'm narrating does not own me or my friends or any of the other characters on Arthur, the show I appear in. But the author will give his notes when I'm done.

Anyway, without further ado, let me tell you a story.

One day while I was in school, I raised my hand and asked, "Teacher, may I please go to the bathroom?"

She said "Yes you may, Carl," and so I went to the boy's room. Thankfully I just had to pee.

As I was going back to my classroom, thinking nothing was wrong or going to go wrong, a really loud, but familiar, noises suddenly started blasting.

"Ahh!" I shouted as I stopped cold in my tracks, closed my eyes and held my ears. I hate loud noises. And to make things more uncomfortable, I jumped up (not literally, just some sort of reaction you get when a loud noise or whatever scares you, especially when unexpected) and my heart was pounding. I hate it when that happens.

When I opened my eyes and looked up, still holding my ears, I saw bright white lights flashing like lightning up under the ceilings. It was another one of those fire drills, and I was actually right near one of the fire alarms!

At first I didn't move from my spot although I knew I had to get out of the building but I panicked and hesitated for a second. Next I saw doors opening and saw the other kids and their teachers coming out of rooms left and right and heading to the nearest exits to them. When I saw my class, I let go of my ears and managed to walk fast toward my classmates and walked toward the exit with them.

I desperately wanted to get out of that building because while the strobe lights didn't bother me that much, the noise of the fire alarms did. Not only did they scare me, they also drove me nuts! Fire drills were what I really hated, and still hate, about school, besides hard homework assignments, quizzes, and tests. I've only been in school for three weeks now and this is the third Wednesday in a row we done had a fire drill, so we had been having fire drills for the last three weeks now. I've been inside the classroom when fire alarms went off and even inside the rooms where there were no fire alarms, they still scared me when they went off. But being outside in the hallways where they were, that really scared me! That had to be a large amount of decibels.

When I finally got out of the building and got further away, the fire alarms were softer although I could also hear the fire alarms outside the building.

And even while I was outside, and then was allowed to go back inside once the fire drill is over, I was still shaken up and I felt uneasy for the rest of the day. I even felt paranoid because I thought the fire alarms were going to go off again, and I always feel this way after hearing a fire alarm, at least for the rest of the school day. I'd be over it by the next day and be okay until the next fire drill sounded, and I still get that way to this day.

The following Wednesday, I told my mom, "I don't want to go to school today."

"Why not, Carl?" she asked me.

"Because what if there's a fire drill?" I answered her.

"I'm sorry, Carl," she said, "but you have to go to school."

"But I'm scared of the fire drills," I told her, "fire drills scare me. And I hate loud noises. And we've had fire drills over the last three Wednesdays."

"Carl," said Mom, crouching down and touching my shoulder, "I know and understand you're scared, and I know you don't like loud noises. You're not alone, many other people hate loud noises too And it's not just children, some grownups don't like them either. In fact, I don't like them that much either."

"Really?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said, "but we have to deal with them. And I can't let you stay home from school because of a fire drill, you need your education, and fire drills are important. Do you know why they're important?"

"Yes," I said, "I do."

"Why are they important?" I was asked by my mom.

"Because they are to let us know what to do if there's a fire," I answered.

"That's right," said my mom. "Without fire drills, you won't know what to do if there was a fire. And I know fire alarms can be scary, they scare me too, but they are really important because they let you know that the building could be on fire and they tell you to stop what you're doing and get out of the building. Do you understand?"

"I guess so," I answered, "but I'm still scared and I still don't want to go to school today."

"I know you don't want to, sweetie," said Mom. "But you still have to. Besides, you don't know if you're going to have a fire drill today. You might not even have one today."

"Really?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said, "and we shouldn't worry about things that might not happen."

"I'm still scared to go to school today," I said, "but I'll go."

"That's a good boy, Carl," Mom said back to me. "Now go before you miss your bus."

On the bus-ride to school, despite what my mother said, I still worried we would have a fire drill today, I got anxious and I started crying.

Then when the bus stopped, another kid came and sat next to me and asked me, "Carl, what's the matter."

Still crying, I said to her, "I think we're going to have another fire drill and I'm scared."

"How do you know that?" she asked me.

"Because it's Wednesday," I told her, "and we had a fire drill the last three Wednesdays."

"Yeah it is true," she said to me, "but that doesn't mean we're going to have one today."

"That's what my mom told me," I said to the girl sitting next me.

"I'm not saying we're not going to have a fire drill," she said, "but I'm also not saying we're going to have one either, but we might not have one. But you can't worry about something that might not happen."

"My mom said that to me too," I said.

"And she's right," the girl told me. "Why don't you just try not to think about it, and try to focus on other things, like what your teachers tell you."

"Okay," I said. "I'm still scared, but I'll go."

"You can do it, Carl," the girl said, "I know you can."

When in school, I tried not to think about the fire drill but couldn't help thinking one was going to happen. However, I made it all through the day and not once did the fire alarms go off. Boy did I feel silly!

When I went back to my house, Mom asked me, "How was school, Carl?"

I answered, "It was okay."

"Did you have a fire drill?" she asked me.

"No we didn't," I answered her.

"See," said Mom, "if I'd let you stay home from school, you would have stayed home for nothing."

"Yeah," I said, "I feel so silly."

I went on to tell her, "I still don't like fire drills, but I'll go to school whether we have one or not."

"That's my boy!" my mom said.

However, the next day the fire alarm did go off, and it was a false alarm because some insensitive jerk pulled the fire alarm. Thankfully I heard he got caught and was suspended."

That's my story. And now, here's William with his Author's notes.

**A/N** I created this story after watching the end of the Arthur episode "Go Fly a Kite," where Carl says he doesn't like loud noises. I don't like loud noises either even though I can for the most part handle train horns. Plus, while fire alarms do fascinate me, and I just recently started a fire alarm picture collection (taking pictures of different kinds of fire alarms, some of which are manufactured by Simplex,) they also scare the living daylights out of me! Especially when I don't expect them to go off, which often times I don't, well who does?

Since Carl and I both have Asperger's Syndrome and both hate loud noises, and I don't have very good, or all good experiences with fire drills and fire alarms, I decided to write a fanfic of Carl going through a fire drill. When I was 8 years old, which is how old Carl is, I learned I was scared of fire alarms, especially since in one school I went to, the fire alarms blared through the P.A. system, and to me that was worse than the fire alarms that hung outside in the hallways. Well, any fire alarm inside a classroom, or other room, whether it's the obvious ones normally seen in the hallways, and have strobe lights (at least the more modern ones), or worse, through the P.A. system, it scares me to death.

And when I was going to that school, during the second Thursday, there was a fire drill. And it occurred the previous Thursday, which was the first Thursday of school that year. I mean during my first fire drill in that school, I wasn't scared, although it was the first time I heard a fire drill that sounded like a siren, which sounded like a sick or injured cow. There were no strobe lights though, this was Rainbow Elementary School in Ansbach, Germany. That school did catch fire in 1999 so my father told me, and they had it remodeled, although I don't know if they upgraded the Fire Alarm system there and if there are strobe lights or not now (and it would be nice if there were. If anyone is attending this school, please let me know in a comment or P.M.)

Anyway, while the fire drill we had on the first Thursday didn't scare me, the one we had on the second Thursday did. I even heard one of my classmates say "That scared me!" I came to the conclusion that fire drills occurred on Thursdays. And we had one on the third Thursday of school, but thankfully it was recess and I was already outside when it happened. We still had to line up though, but when the fire drill stopped, we were excused back to the play ground.

Then I think on the next Thursday, I thought a fire drill was going to happen and I told my mother I didn't want to go to school but she said "Sorry, you have to go." And I went, expecting a fire drill, and I got so scared I cried on the bus-ride to school. And to my relief, there was no fire drill all that day. One more fire drill did happen on a Thursday but that wasn't for another several weeks. The next fire drill happened on a Friday sometime later, and then the sixth and last fire drill we had that year happened on a Monday.

I was going to narrate this story, but I decided to let Carl narrate the story and I haven't had a character narrate a story in a while, so I had Carl narrate instead of me. I hope you liked it. And I cannot wait to write another story narrated by a character instead of by me.

I also kept meaning to write this story but kept forgetting to do so, but now that I remembered, I decided to write it.

Thanks for reading.


End file.
